Surrealists, surrealists, and stuff like that

I see you're coming out swinging with your first post—'Spiklence' is absolutely one of the top surrealist films ever made. Period.😁I recently caught Svankmajer's short 'The Fall of the House of Usher,' based on that Poe story. Honestly? It doesn't quite crack his top tier, but the concept is killer—doing an adaptation without any "living" characters, just using stop-motion animation on inanimate objects.

As for recommendations, I have no clue what you've already seen, so I'm just guessing here. For instance, a year before 'an Andalusian Dog,' they released the seashell and the clergyman—arguably the very first surrealist film.

City of Pirates—Raoul Ruiz was easily one of the most consistent modern surrealists out there, and this flick is definitely among his best.😍

Fantastic Planet—A total classic. The design was done by Roland Topor (who wrote the novel Roman Polanski adapted for that great film 'The Tenant').

Grass Labyrinth

Street of Crocodiles—A classic short, based on Schulz's stories.

If you're a Svankmajer fan, you absolutely have to watch 'Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.' 👍

Dennis Martin6 already brought up Grass Labyrinth (1979), but if you ask me, the director's absolute best work is pastoral : to die in The country (1974). It’s easily one of the finest films I’ve ever sat through.

Basically, the movie follows Terayama as he revisits his childhood, traveling back into his own past to kill off his possessive mother—just a desperate attempt to wipe out his future problems before they even happen. The cinematography, the dialogue, the score, and the overall concepts... I guess it’s just peak underground cinema. I went on to watch most of the Terayamin catalog after that, but honestly, nothing else really comes close to this one.

Maybe I'll write something about other American New Wave films later. I've watched a ton of them, and some of those highly creative pieces rarely get any mention at all.

If you want something a bit more modern, you should definitely check out Guy Maddin. Start with his The Saddest Music in The World and then move on to brand Upon The Brain. You could even dive into Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary. If those hit the spot, just keep going through his filmography.

It’s all there—expressionism, surrealism, you name it.

Then there's Obayashiev if you're feeling more in the mood for some Far East surrealism, like Haus.

Or you can go with Jodorowsky and his stuff like el Topo and la Montana Sagrada.

There's also Bunuel and EL Angel Exterminador.

...

Gerald Jackson48 said:Then there's Obayashiev's Haus, if you're feeling more in the mood for some Far Eastern surrealism.

This is actually my favorite movie, just a totally wild thing.😁

Hey everyone, I know some of this might be old news to some of you, but there’s enough fresh stuff here that I’ll definitely have plenty to sink my teeth into this weekend.

I’ve got a recommendation for you—it isn't technically a film, but it certainly qualifies as high-level visual art. It’s quite possibly my favorite Flash game of all time: mitoza.

p.s. And since we were talking about Japanese creators, if you haven't seen
funky Forest
yet, you really ought to...

ruggedbadger2 said:This is my absolute favorite movie, just a total trip 😁

Yeah, totally wild. It’s a bizarre experience if you happen to be someone who likes their movies with a bit of teeth. 😁

Gerald Jackson48: If you're in the mood for some Far Eastern surrealism, you might want to check out Obayashiev's Haus.

I have a feeling I watched that once in the middle of the night, it rings a bell... or perhaps I just dreamt of something similar... 🤣

Douglas Kern62 said:I feel like I watched this once in the middle of the night. It rings a bell... or maybe I just dreamed up something similar. 🤣

Ha, ha, anything's possible.

Benjamin's Institute (1995) — based on Robert Walser’s novel 'Jakob von Gunten,' it’s about the kids at some facility training them to be nothing more than servants. The book itself is written in this stream-of-consciousness style that basically paved the way for Joyce, Kafka, Gombrowicz, and the rest of those heavy hitters. Actually, when Kafka first hit the scene, people were constantly drawing parallels to Walser, even if their styles aren't exactly twins. The Coen brothers take this story and turn it into something totally different—instead of that mellow, resigned, melancholic absurdity you get from Walser, they lean hard into a suffocating, Kafkaesque sense of oppression. But hey, that's just what these guys do—their use of light and animating inanimate objects is absolutely killer. Overall, the movie is a flawless execution of early 20th-century silent avant-garde techniques, but honestly? It feels a bit hollow. It lacks that raw human soul and emotional weight that was actually present in the original book.

Anyone got any recommendations for a short surrealist film? Looking for something with that same vibe as an Andalusian Dog... maybe something just as trippy.

So, I’ve gotta recommend this short film by David Lynch called David Lynch The Grandmother. It’s about this kid dealing with some pretty heavy abuse from his parents, so he ends up using seeds to basically grow a grandmother to protect him and look after him... It’s just brilliantly done 👍

Here we go again with the constant Lynch talk... 🙄

Dennis Martin6 already brought up that brilliant Chilean director Raoul Ruiz and his flick City of Pirates. I mean, Alejandro Jodorowsky should be common knowledge by now, and don't even get me started on Luis Bunuel.

Now, they might not be pure surrealism, but the films by American director Andrzej Zulawski definitely have that surrealist edge. Take Possession or The Devil, for instance. I’d probably slot them more into the horror category, but back in the day, Americans used to weave in those surreal elements all the time, much like the Czechs did. Personally, one of my favorite surrealist pieces from that era has to be The Hourglass Sanatorium by Wojciech Has.

Svankmajer was already mentioned. The guy is an undisputed master of his craft.

As for the animated film Fantastic Planet, it isn't strictly surrealism, but you really should see it. I’d say Chronopolis by Piotr Kamler fits the surrealist label better, but hey, people will argue about that until they're blue in the face.

dustycanyon5 said:Anyone got recommendations for some surreal short films? Looking for something in the vein of "an Andalusian Dog".

You already have links above for 'the seashell and the clergyman' (the OG surrealist film) and 'street of crocodiles'.

There’s a massive pile of shorts out there—I'll just drop a few here, someone else will probably jump in with more:

meshes of the afternoon
the heart of the world
asparagus - total bummer you can't find the full thing online, it's pure genius.
cremaster 1
world of glory
two sisters
mt.head

Thanks 👍
I haven't really dived deep into surrealist cinema yet, but man, I definitely want to... I just started getting my feet wet with Lynch recently, and now I'm hooked.

Just finished watching Spiklence... Svankmajer 😬 is someone I wasn't really deep into before this. Honestly, I'm still scratching my head trying to find decent subtitles for it anywhere online 😬 you really have to master the art of making a silent film where every single shot feels earned and justified.

I don't know, I just get this feeling that surrealists at their best are basically just trolling us... like Bunuel with that subtle, biting critique of the upper class (though I guess his whole body of work is surrealist, if you want to pick out specific pieces), or even David Lynch at the end of the day.

I think I'll keep digging into this at this exact pace 🙂

The Woodcutter, 1985. American Necrorealism

Silverheads 1998 Vladimir Maslov

Quote:>

pukylly says: Just finished watching those old classics... I wasn't really deep into Jan Švankmajer 😬 before this, to be honest. Still kind of tripping out because I can't find decent subtitles for it anywhere online 😬 but man, you really have to know how to craft a movie without any dialogue if you want to make sure the scenes actually hold their own...

Sounds pretty interesting. Definitely adding it to my watchlist...

Jan Švankmajer, Věra Chytilová, Sergei Parajanov, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Luis Buñuel... those are my absolute favorites in that category!